tetralamp

Packet drinks are one of the most favored soft drinks among Malaysians. We just love sipping packet drinks wherever we go and never actually bother about the thousands of boxes we discarded off after each quench, despite knowing the fact that landfills across our country are bursting at the seams.

Perhaps, it's about time we adopt a paradigm shift in our attitudes towards making this world a better place. As for me, here's a little GREEN step I am taking to help reducing the amount of waste going to landfills.

Introducing TetraBox Lamp. You will never look at empty packet drinks the same way again!

This recycled lamp is made up of empty Tetra Brik boxes which are cut into strips.The strips are then folded to form hexagon and pentagon modules. No glue or any kind of adhesive is required to hold the modules together, a technique inspired by Kusudama origami.

The folding process is repeated with both modules being folded together to form a sphere.

A basic knowledge of geodesic dome construction ( Buckminster Fuller's geodesic principle - see my first prototype below ) is definitely helpful. Practically, with sufficient packet drinks, one could even build a spherical pavilion as big as a house or a moon!

(Note: The hexagon modules can be easily structured to create many lamp design variations as shown below)

TetraBox Spherical Lamp.

Lamp Size: 260mm diameter.

Material: Discarded packet drinks boxes.

Boxes Required: Approximately 450 empty boxes.

Number of Hexagons required: 108 pieces

To make a Hexagon: 6 strips of 6 squares for the triangle (Size of strip – 130mm(L) x 21mm (W) ) and 6 strips of 4 squares for the knot (Size of strip – 76mm(L) x 19mm (W) to knot them together.

Imagine if each of us were to turn the empty boxes after each quench into a hexagon, and collectively knot them together, what possibly could we achieve? We could possibly achieve building a spherical pavilion as big as a house!